Patient Zero

Chapter Twenty-One

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker / Six days ago

THE LEVEL-A PVC hazmat suit was air-cooled and very comfortable, but Gault still felt like a big marshmallow. He stood close to the airlock. In one hand he held a wireless remote that would trigger the emergency release on the lock in case he had to make a run for it; in the other he held a Snellig 46, an electric wire-dart pistol. Amirah stood behind a Plexiglas wall and her fingers hovered over a computer keyboard.

“What stage is it in?” Gault asked. Their suits were soundproof and the intercoms were of the best quality.

“Advanced stage one.”

Gault cocked an eyebrow. “It’s still alive?”

The creature standing there certainly didn’t look alive. The brown skin had faded to a sickly bruise-yellow; its mouth was slack, lips gray and rubbery. It was only when Gault shifted a few feet to one side in order to see the thing’s eyes that he could detect any trace of intelligence; but even then it was rudimentary.

“I resequenced the hormonal discharge to make the blood chemistry more hospitable for the parasites. They spread the prions at a much more accelerated rate now. The nonessential functions shut down more quickly,” Amirah said brightly. “Higher brain functions deteriorate at a faster rate now.”

“How much faster?”

Amirah paused and turned and flashed him a triumphant smile. “Eight times.”

He frowned. “This is Generation Three?”

She laughed. “Oh no, Sebastian we’ve passed that phase a long time ago. What you’re seeing is Generation Seven of the Seif al Din pathogen. We’ve broken through almost all of the symptomatic barriers.”

Gault’s head whipped around and he stared at the subject then up at the big wall clock. “Seven Christ! When was infection begun?”

“Right before I came to meet you.”

Gault licked his lips. “That’s what, an hour?”

She shook her head. “Less. Forty-seven minutes, and I think we can get that down even more. That rate is based on injection only; we added a new parasite to the salivary glands so infection from bites is much faster, a matter of minutes. By Generation Eight we should have it down to seconds.”

The creature shook its head like an animal shaking off a biting fly. The hazmat suits prevented the subject from hearing or smelling them, which were the two most significant response triggers; however, the sight of them was causing it to become agitated. Without human scent or sound that hadn’t happened with earlier generations. Gault moved his hand experimentally, wanting to see if the creature would track him.

Suddenly it lunged.

Without warning or hesitation it threw itself at Gault, springing across the cold metal floor of the display area, hooked fingers clawing the air as it tried to grab him. Gault cried out and staggered back, but he brought up the Snellig and fired the weapon’s twin flachettes into the monster’s naked chest. He pressed his thumb down on the activator and sent 70,000 volts into the infected predator.

The subject let out a scream like a cougar-high and full of hate-but it dropped down into a fetal ball, twitching as the current burned through it.

“That’s enough,” he heard Amirah shout, and Gault sagged back, releasing the button. His chest was heaving and his heart hammering. Amirah laughed as she came out from behind the Plexi screen. “The new parasite has enhanced predatory aggression by at least half, and it begins far sooner. Even from a nonfatal bite the infection will take hold within minutes and begin reducing cognitive function. In cases of a more serious bite, or in the presence of other traumatic injuries, the infection will spread exponentially faster.”

“He could have killed me!” Gault snapped, rounding on her and pointing the Snellig at her chest. For a white-hot moment he almost pulled the trigger.

But she was still laughing, shaking her head. “Oh, don’t be such an old woman.” She used the toe of one booted foot to pull back the creature’s upper lip. Gault saw that the pale gums were smooth. Amirah said, “I had its teeth pulled in preparation for the demonstration. I’m not an idiot, Sebastian.”

Gault said nothing for a moment, his jaw locked, lips curled back from his teeth in as savage a snarl as he’d seen on the face of the subject. Then, by slow degrees, he forced himself to let go of the moment. He made his face relax first and gradually straightened his body from the defensive crouch. “You could have effing well warned me!”

“That would have been less fun.”

“God, you’re a wicked bitch,” he said, but now he was smiling, too. It was completely artificial but he made it look convincing, thinking, You are so going to pay for that, my dear.

Amirah either couldn’t tell how upset he truly was, or didn’t care-and the hazmat suit hid most of his face-but she looked at the wall clock and then walked back to her control console, pulling off her hood. “The new hormone sequence has one more really marvelous effect,” she said as she punched some keys. There was a heavy metallic chunk as steel panels slid back on the floor. She hit another button and four curved sections of inch-thick reinforced glass rose from the floor. Their sides fit together with only a faintness of the seam visible. The glass walls hissed upward until they reached a large circular track in the ceiling. As the upper edges slid into the tracks there was another chunking sound and the walls stopped moving. Amirah watched the wall clock all the while. The subject lay in the center of a big glass and steel jar.

“Wait for it,” she murmured as the digital counters ticked away the seconds. “Should be right about now. Generation Seven is so wonderfully quick.”

The creature suddenly opened its eyes and peeled back its lips to issue a hiss of animal hatred. No sound escaped the barrier, but Gault still flinched. Then he blinked and looked from the subject to the clock and back again.

“Wait ” he said, “that doesn’t ”

Amirah’s gorgeous dark eyes sparkled with delight. “Reanimation time is now under ninety seconds.”

He tore off his hood and threw it onto a nearby console. “God,” he gasped, staring at the monster.

“If you were worried that the Americans might harvest one of our subjects for research it doesn’t matter now. They can have all of the subjects we’ve already sent but any preventive measure they design will be built on the wrong generation of the disease.”

She walked over and placed her palm on the glass and even when the subject lunged at her and slammed its face against the inner wall on the other side she didn’t flinch. There was an adoring look on her face as she stared at the subject.

Gault came to stand next to her. The subject kept banging against the glass, its infected brain unable to process the concept of transparency. Even without scent it knew that its prey was there. That was the only thought it could hold on to.

In an awed voice, Amirah whispered, “Once we release these new subjects into the population the infection will spread beyond control. They won’t be able to keep ahead of it.”

Gault nodded slowly but his mind was working at computer speed, putting everything he’d seen and everything Amirah had said into context. It was an effort to keep his feelings about all of this off his face.

“This is unstoppable,” Amirah said with a predatory hiss in her voice. “We can kill them all.”

“Now, now,” he said, wrapping his arm around her, “let’s not lose focus here. We don’t want to kill them all, darling. What would be the point in that? We simply want to make them all very, very sick.”

He stroked her breast through the hazmat material.

She said nothing but he saw her turn away as if to look at some gauges and he was certain she was trying to hide her expression. “You told me to continue with the research, to improve the model. What do you expect me to do with everything I’ve developed? Just destroy it?”

“Yes, I bloody well do,” he said, but then he stopped, lips pursed, considering; then something occurred to him. “Actually hold on a bit.”

She turned back to him, her face showing hurt and suspicion. “What?”

“I have a wonderful idea,” he purred. “I think I figured out how to use your new monster. Oh yes, this is both juicy and delicious.”

Still frowning, she said, “Tell me!”

“Before I do you have to promise me that you’ll use it only as I suggest. We can’t really let this generation of the pathogen out. Not ever. You do understand that, don’t you?”

She said nothing.

“Do you understand?” He said it again, slowly, reinforcing each syllable.

“Yes, yes, I understand. You really are such an old woman at times, Sebastian.”

“Dear heart we want to buy the world, not bury it.”

Amirah gave him a slow three-count and then nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I just wanted you to see what we could accomplish. We’ve created a new kind of life, an entirely new state of existence. Unlife.”

He stepped back from her and stared, the devious smile still frozen onto his mouth.

Unlife.

God Almighty, he thought.

“Now tell me your idea,” she said, breaking through the shell of his shocked and fragile thoughts. “How can you use my new pathogen to help us in our cause?”

And suddenly Gault was snapped out of his reverie and out of his shock and was completely present in his mind. She had said “cause,” not program. Not scheme, or plan. Cause. That is a very interesting choice of a word, my love, he thought.

So he told her and he watched her face as she listened; and he paid special attention to the muscles around her eyes and the dilation of her pupils. What he saw told him a lot. Perhaps too much, and it both elated him and hurt him. By the time he was done her beautiful face was suffused with a terrible light.

Amirah pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him. They held tightly together, ignoring the absurdity of the PVC suits.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he said, and meant it.

And when this is done I may have to feed you to one of your pets, he thought. And he meant that, too.